Husband of one; son of two, father of three, grandfather of four, second of four girls and five boys, in-law to six, and usher at the Church on the seventh,

BSA/GSA scout parent, band(s) parent, math club/science club parent, Little league parent, and grandparent of 4 (so far) .... One kid paying taxes, one kid spending your taxes while fixing/breaking the planes the USAF gives him; one kid earned her first degrees in Physics and a second one in Mathematics, got two Masters and is earning dollars as a professor.

Nuclear and Fossil Field Engineer (Machining, Welding, Equipment & Piping and Pipe Supports, Electrical and electronics installation); Software QA and testing, 3D CAD programming and design .... power plants, military logistics support, transportation and power, space, industrial, electronic and mechanical systems, solar power and alt energy systems. Was on subs for 5 years in new construction and reactor startup (mostly in various shipyards in the East Coast) and then 5 years as shipyard ship supervisor and nuclear ship supervisor, ship's planning officer for the next 5......Been in CAD and software testing and plant/mechanical\systems design ever since.

It's not that I don't trust PC's or computers, it's that they will merely repeat (endlessly) whatever mistakes the programmer and user lets them make and repeat. But of course, I trust liberals, liars, lawyers and the national media (aren't they all the same?) even less.....

Hobbies include steelworking and carpentry, solar power systems, reading, sailing, bi-cycling, re-cycling, and politics. Also: looking for under-inflated tires and missing lugnuts on any cars that pass by.

Prefer development of fusion power/fast-breeder plants over simple fission; prefer (intelligent, market-driven) conservation and reuse of materials and resources over burning/burying our kids' petroleum resources; prefer the natural supply and demand system of economics - and thoroughly despise liberal hypocrisy and the national media's lies and prejudices ....

Consider the Big Bang Theory incomplete and incorrect; expect it will be as discredited as the flat-earth and the "ether" in a few year's time- probably in favor of a modified plasma theory/steady-state process. Probably adding also absorption/re-emmission of the background thermal radiation from intermediate particles/plasma vortices between the stars. (There's something inherently "wired" about any cosmological theories that evoke more than 10^500 variables (string theories) or require that we "accept" the fact that more than 90% of all matter be "dark matter" populated by "dark energy" sources that can't be seen or measured. And all that required so the mathematics becomes "symmetrical". That's putting the mathematical carts in front of the horse.) Black holes are likely the space-time wormholes massive source of "new" material appearing in mid-space that feeds the "new" material required by theory to form a steady-state universe.

This combination of competing cosmological theories would probably also include Hawkings' theories transmission of particles back out of black holes as the source of the &quot;new&quot; particles that the near-steady-state theories require. Age of the universe? Most likely some 150-175 billion years .... long enough to create the super-strings recently discovered.

Any theory of the universe has to explain how ancient wandering illiterate shepherds got the whole sequence of evolution and cosmology exactly correct; minus a few decimal places. (But dates and log's and powers-of-ten hadn't been invented yet, by the way. Nor could they count with zero's ... which also weren't invented yet.)

But they got the formation of the stars from plasma and dust, then light; then the planets, then the moon and oceans, the single continent then the splitting of that land mass in continental drift; then plants, the clearing of the atmosphere with oxygen, insects; dinosaurs (Genesis creates birds BEFORE mammals!); then finally domesticated animals and Man.

Not a bad geological record for a bunch of farmers!

With this, am I stretching the truth, or trying to "edit" science terms into some Biblical terms where it doesn't fit?

Not very much: Consider that "waters" isn't a stretch into -> fluids -> gasses -> plasmas. And a "mighty force upon the waters" certainly could describe the (Divinely initiated) intial forces of the Big Bang. Which absolutely, as science claims, began as a "formless structure" in the void.

Again, both theories are correct, but Genesis was first.

Separating "light" from "darkness" requires mass be present, which only happened after "light" energy cooled down into the first matter.

Again, both theories are correct, but Genesis was first.

Separating "waters above" (interstellar gasses) from "waters below" (the atmospheric gasses) by the "dome" of the sky certainly happened. Most remarkable, because there is no reason for someone in ancient Israel to know enough to invent a tale about the interstellar gasses at all at that time!

Again, both theories are correct, but Genesis was first.

Gathering the waters (the traditional seas, in this case) into one basin certainly happened. And, if there were "one basin" then there could only be "one" land mass as well, yet clearly, Genesis contradicted what the Jews could see with their own eyes! Obviously Europe, Asia, and Africa WERE separated by different seas into different lands! (In fact, even "science" ridiculed the original proponents of continental drift (one only land mass was gathered together in the beginning, and only one sea was created in the beginning) up until the early 60's! Only now, 5500 years after it first written, and then re-discovered in the mid-20's, is continental drift accepted.)

Again, both theories are correct, but Genesis was first. Genesis was just harder to believe than "science" at every age.

Sea creatures and birds (dinosaurs) were the first forms of animal life, appearing well after the plants began to grow. But "science" is only now beginning to theorize that dinosaurs and birds were (are) from the same root stock!

Again, both theories are correct, but Genesis was first.

Mammals didn't just suddenly "appear" after the dinosaurs were destroyed 65 million some-odd years ago, but they didn't come to dominate the earth until then either. Appropriately and accurately, domesticated mammals and Man were certainly created last.

Again, both theories are correct, but Genesis was first.

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To elaborate on the above musings, A simple challenge: Please read the following description of the worlds creation.

Then tell me where it came from: an obscure word-of-mouth tradition starting some 5000-odd years ago by itinerant shepherds who didnt even have a zero to count upon, much less decimal points to keep track of time; or the latest 20th century particle physics textbooks, archeology, geology and oceanographic references, biology and taxology theories, and astronomical discoveries.

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Everything was created. Suddenly and with great violence, but with uncalculable forces in the darkness. From this energy, light condensed a short while later. Then matter was created as the light energy further cooled. A period of time passed.

The earth and solar system was formed from the galactic dust and interstellar plasmas, gathering together and cooling into the individual spheres (the planets and their atmospheres) and the sun we see rotating around our sky today. Another period of time passed.

Down here on the earth itself, one continent was formed surrounded by one single massive sea, later breaking up and re-connecting by continental drift into the continents and seven seas everybody is familiar with today. Once dry, cool (non-volcanic) land appeared, the first plants began growing, changing the original inhospitable and deadly atmosphere of toxic and light-absorbing gasses into the clear and viable combination of oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor and carbon dioxide we need (the balance of gasses that all life needs on earth!) to survive today. These first plants kept growing for another while longer.

Well, the atmosphere was finally clear enough for visible light to be transmitted through the previously dark atmosphere, and suddenly the available energy on the surface grew large enough to support more life, higher forms of life above simple plants.

So animal life grew  first in the warm tropic seas as fish and amphibians, then on land with dinosaurs (who evolved into birds) and then modern large mammals. Man finally straggled onto the scene, very late behind everything else.

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From a question on FreeRepublic.com today: Where Does All Earths Gold Come From? First answer: Supernovas.

OK. Let's assume that answer is right.

And then let us actually do the math and re-create the physics required just to create all of the gold believed to be on earth. No other substances or elements, just the gold.

Gold is Au 79, atomic weight 197.

Simplest way to "build up" isotopes in a collider or supernova by fusion is to "add up" He2/4 nuclei: He is thought to be only 1/5 of the initial elements from the "Big Bang" (the rest being hydrogen H1/1, a small amount of H1/2 and H1/3, and a very, very little bit of Lithium. So, to create just one Au 79/197 atom, you need just under 40 collisions of He2/4 plus 37 extra neutrons at 0/1 atomic weight. (There are other ways, such as one simultaneous collision of between a Y39/89 + Zr40/91 + 17 neutrons ... but then still have to create the Yttrium39 and Zirconium40 (and find the 17 neutrons) in some earlier series of supernovas.)

Once created, that single, little atom of gold must drift randomly (or be blown out of the supernova directly towards the earth's future galactic position so it can be gathered into the pre-solar systems mass of dust and plasmas. Then that gold atom must avoid being sucked into the dust balls of the sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Venus, etc and actually be collected by earth's dust ball. And all of this must happen BEFORE the sun lights up the solar system - since we know the earth's orbit is essentially unchanged since the solar system was formed. By the way, that inconvenient Earth-moon collision must be included: That would only blow our single gold atom out of the earth's crust at some 4.6 billion year ago and push it into earth orbit, the moon's crust, or back into the solar system.)

So, we now have one gold atom - formed by a single supernova and blasted out of that supernova into interstellar space, gathered into the solar system's general area, gathered into earth's specific dust ball out of that whole area, then gathered and kept isolated so it stays within the earth's condensing mass. But you see, we don't have just one gold atom on earth: we have some 158,000 tonnes of gold actually mined - from ancient pre-history to today's date. (This ignores how many tonnes of gold remain undiscovered in the crust. That amount will be skipped from here on.)

Regardless of reserves and not-mined-yet masses, we know absolutely that 158,000 tons has to have been created in the first place by the reader's supernovas and blown through space and collected by earth's gravity - since that much has been actually mined and counted!

Now, chemistry tells us reliably and by good measurements that a single "mole" of any pure substance weighs an atomic mass of that substance (KGS system required!) and contains one single Avogadro number of atoms of that substance. That is, a single mol of Helium weighs 4 grams, and has 6.02 x 10^23 atoms in those 4 grams. A single mol of carbon 12 weighs 12 grams and contains 6.02 x 10^23 atoms of C6/12. (Specifically, 6.02214179×10^23 mol−1 in grams, and 2.73159757×10^26 atoms/lb in pounds.)

Thus, your supernova's must have created 158,000 tons of gold x 2200 lbs/ton x 2.73x10^26 atoms/lb number of gold atoms. That we have discovered and mined so far on earth.

So, we have mined 9.48 x 10^34 gold atoms. So far. At 40 collisions of He2/4 (or one single simultaneous collision of 40 He2/4 ions plus 37 neutrons) that would require 3.79 x 10^36 collisions. (Doesn't matter whether you assume multiple supernova's or one single supernova, you still need to combine 40+ collisions of ions to create one gold ion. Plus the extra 37 neutrons so your gold isotope doesn't radioactively decay before it gets mined.)

Now, these 3.8x10^36 collisions have to occur BEFORE these gold atoms get to today's solar system dust cloud, but after the Big Bang.

Since the sun is said to have lit off and begun fusion some 4.6 billion years ago, and the Big Bang 14.5 billion to 13.7 billion years ago, all of the solar system's current mass must have collected in the time between 14 billion and 5 billion years ago.

Call it a maximum of 9 billions of years of potential element formation: and that's ONLY if you assume a chain of supernova's in your creation tree, then you must account for the "coasting" of ions between one supernova and the next.

Expansion of the universe since the Big Bang? Movement of the solar system through space away from the original Big Bang? You would need to include those issues as well in a realistic analysis.

For now, let's assume that no supernova-created gold got blown away from earth. That no time was spent for those predecessor gold isotopes "coasting" with no interactions between supernova events. That every gold proto-isotope created in cycle one got assumed immediately into supernova two for subsequent re-supernova cycles to get "bumped" up into ever-higher and higher atomic weight isotopes. (One could also assume that all of the earth's gold was actually created into one single dust cloud and that dust cloud was centered around earth's future orbit so none "was lost in space" after it was created.) None of these assumptions are realistic, but they are required for today's supernova theory to use the absolute minimum number of collisions and fusion steps.

Thus, you require a chain of 3.8 x 10^36 supernova-inspired collisions to have occurred in only 9x10^9 years. 4.2 x 10^26 supernova-inspired collisions per year for 10^9 years. 1.33 x 10^19 fusions per second uninterrupted and each exactly in the right order for 10^9 years.

Or you can believe in miracles.

Which is more likely?

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Conventional astrophysics only recognized supernova building of the elements (above the Fe and Ni isotopes) and stellar fusion->collapsing star->layered burning for isotopes past the 3-alpha carbon bottleneck. And each step of that stellar fusion and collapse adds millions (billions ?) of years to each lifetime of each isotope that is created. Making it less and less and less likely that the elements were actually formed that way.

On a one-by-one basis, the "conventional theory" is correct: It works in the mathematics, it works at the individual atomic level of each individual binding energy and each individual decay rate and fusion cross-section, it works in the laboratory as each individual particle accelerator results as a new isotopes are deposited on the collectors one by one. And all of those steps are (by themselves) correct: we can establish that atoms (isotopes) are built up that way. I've made atoms that way myself. I've burned atoms that way myself.

But.

There must be some other process where by all of the isotopes and atoms we know by measurement are present on earth have been built. Created. Formed. Fused up. Or fused up and eventually fissioned back down.

We just cannot build enough isotopes in the "conventional wisdom" way, then transport those finished gold atoms across space between the stars fast enough to get enough of them here inside earth's crust to make a single ounce of gold. Much less a single Holy Grail. 8<)